(With my apologies to those of you who are only here for the recipes – occasionally I digress into other things that I feel are important, too, and today instead of sharing my Love Soup recipe or Come To Bed Carbonara again, this came pouring out of my fingertips instead.)
Happy Valentines day…
To every man and woman who ever told me I wasn’t good enough.
To the one who said my reflexive shutting down sometimes was like ‘fucking a corpse’. (Abuse survivor here, that’s not how to make it all start working again btw). To the one who hit me across the face when I said no.
To the one who strangled me and assaulted me when I was pregnant.
To the ones who call me fat, porky, that tell me I’ve let myself go.
To every anonymous egg on Twitter who has fantasised about my death, rape and torture, and told me so.
To the naysayers, the abusers, the violent, the deeply unhappy.
I wish for you – nothing but love. Because all of these things come from a place where love is void. They come from the darkness. They come from the polar opposite of the patience and kindness, the benevolence, the warmth, the self-acceptance, that is love.
Happy Valentines Day to the lonely, the dispossessed, those sitting in their bedrooms typing furious shit to strangers on the internet. Love yourselves. God damn love yourselves.
Start with liking yourselves.
Write down one thing that is good about you.
Do something good for someone else.
Repeat and repeat and repeat.
And see what changes.
Because in spite of all the damage, I love myself.
I like myself.
My god it’s been a long road to here. A long dark road of dragons and loss and loathing but I’m here. God damnit, I’m here. And you can be too.
Happy Valentines Day.
I hope you find love, know love, are love. With all my love, Jack. XX
(And whoever ‘R’ is, you can see how happy those flowers made me…)
And now I’m heading out to dinner with this handsome fellow, to the Drapers Arms, where Nick donates all of the evenings takings every year to Refuge. I hope whatever you are doing tonight, you do it with a little love for yourself.
Back to recipes tomorrow!
Jxxx
My new book, Cooking on a Bootstrap, is now available to order HERE.
This blog is free to those who need it, and always will be, but it does of course incur costs to run and keep it running. If you use it and benefit, enjoy it, and would like to keep it going, please consider popping something in the tip jar, and thankyou.